Jacob’s story highlights that blessings come about in unexpected ways if we’re willing to look for them and even work toward them in a sense. We may have ideas about how we want God to work in our churches but they don’t always match up with his. How might God be working unexpectedly in your church? Is the Spirit working in a way that you didn’t see coming? What trends do you see? What ministries are producing fruit?
The saga of Sarah and Hagar is raw and real. We are not unfamiliar with feelings of emptiness and hopes deferred even with thousands of years separating our lives from the lives of these women. How do we deal with brokenness and loss? How can we trust when the answers to our prayers may not be seen in our lifetimes? Where is God in our deepest struggles? He sees us. He hears us.
As Christians, we have an advantage over Abraham and the faith heroes of the Old Testament. What they looked forward to in hope, we can look back upon with awe and gratitude. However, even though we’ve received such precious promises, we can often forget that God has kept his word. We need to remember the precious promises of God. Even the ones we still wait and hope for.
One of the remarkable things about Abraham, who God chose to enter into a covenant with, was that his faith was not compartmentalized. He worshiped God wherever he went. Wherever he set up his tent, he also built an altar to the Lord. When he won a war he worshiped a Jesus type in Melchizedek. He involved his family in worship, albeit in one of the wildest texts in the Bible, as Isaac carries the wood for his own sacrifice.
While Christmas is a time of quiet reflection over Christ’s impact on our lives, New Year’s Eve often makes look at the year ahead. Those who trust God’s promises have a lot to hope for. And ‘hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”
The story of Jesus’s birth shook the world. It calls people to surrender their lives to a baby boy who will eventually grow up to be a man who will die for the sins of the humanity.
The Bible’s foundational story set ends with Babel and a new beginning. There are many facets of the Babel story but we’ll focus here on language as it’s the first thing mentioned in the Genesis 11 account. They had a “common language and a common vocabulary” (NET Bible). Even though we are tasked with using language to preach the word of God, we might not consider language enough. Babel teaches us that when humans get together in like-minded groups to accomplish lofty goals, their language is a concern.
We may not immediately associate the rest of God (Sabbath) with the account of Noah and his ark but there are clear connections to be found in these foundational stories. Noah means rest in Hebrew
Early on, the Bible frames what we would later call sin, as going beyond the limitations God set for humans. The theological word for such sin is transgression. God, in his love, has given us boundaries to keep us safe, to keep us from hurting ourselves by doing more than we can handle physically, mentally, and spiritually.
It’s easy for us to take creation for granted. In other words, we get used to existing. It’s good to step back and look at the miracle of our existence and to try and recognize God’s purpose and intent for humanity. As Christ-followers, we are image-bearers for the divine and yet, at the same time, we are often plunged into the messiness of muddy situations in the church and in our own lives.